Prioritisation – the trojan horse for better strategy delivery?

Introduction

Most organisations already know they cannot do everything.

• They have more ideas than capacity.
• More initiatives than leadership attention.
• More transformation demand than operational tolerance.

So they prioritise. Or at least they try to.

At a recent BIG CIC discussion, we explored a proposition: could project and programme prioritisation become the practical starting point for improving strategy delivery?

Not because prioritisation itself is the real problem but because prioritisation is often the point where deeper organisational issues become impossible to ignore – and it cannot be ignored across run and change.

The session recordings for our discussion are here

This was led by:

David Dunning – making the case for starting with prioritisation
Kiran Goparaju– the structural challenge
Alex Shapley– devil’s advocate
Veronica Edward-Smith – the PMO position
David Booth– the strategist position
Dan Dures – the practitioner viewpoint

When organisations try to prioritise seriously, they quickly expose:

• conflicting objectives
• fragmented governance
• overloaded teams
• unclear accountability
• weak strategy translation
• hidden dependencies
• and inconsistent decision-making.

The Perspectives

The session deliberately approached this challenge from multiple perBspectives.

The Structural Perspective highlighted that organisations often confuse different layers of prioritisation:

• strategic optionality
• investment prioritisation
• delivery sequencing
• and operational execution.

The PMO Perspective highlighted that most organisations do not fundamentally have prioritisation problems – they have enterprise decision-making and trade-off management problems.

The Strategist Perspective challenged the idea that strategy is static at all, arguing instead that strategy implementation requires continual steering, adaptation and learning.

The Practitioner Perspective reinforced that prioritisation only works when organisations trust the process, understand the rationale, and possess sufficient governance legitimacy to support difficult trade-offs.

The Implementation Gap

Taken together, the discussion led us toward a broader conclusion.

The real gap in many organisations is not between strategy and projects. It is between strategy development and strategy delivery.

Most organisations possess:

• strategy formulation capability;
• and delivery management capability.

But very few explicitly own the “machinery in the middle”:

• the continuous translation of strategy into coordinated organisational behaviour.

That implementation layer includes:

• prioritisation
• governance
• accountability
• dependency management
• operational coordination
• implementation steering
• and continuous trade-off management.

Without it:

• strategy becomes aspiration
• and delivery becomes fragmented execution activity.

The Proposition

The proposition we explored was intentionally pragmatic. Rather than starting with:

• governance redesign
• operating model transformation
• or theoretical strategy alignment,

we proposed using prioritisation as the practical “Trojan horse” to surface implementation friction and progressively improve organisational coherence.

The emerging implementation path looked something like this:

1. Use prioritisation discussions to surface operational and strategic friction.
2. Improve visibility and linkage between:
   purpose → vision → strategy → objectives → initiatives.
3. Improve accountability by connecting initiatives to measurable sub-objectives and outcomes.
4. Extend prioritisation and implementation coherence into broader business unit and operational management.

Importantly, this is not a proposal for centralised command-and-control planning. Nor is it another portfolio scoring exercise.

It is a proposal to progressively improve the organisation’s ability to make conscious trade-offs across:

• strategy
• operations
• transformation
• risk
• technology
• and delivery.

Speculating a Starting Point?

Following the session, some of us explored what a practical organisational starting point might look like.

One promising model was collaboration between:

• the Head of Strategy
• the Head of PMO
• and the Head of Corporate Governance,

working together under executive sponsorship – potentially from a COO or CFO – to help the organisation:

• surface prioritisation friction
• improve implementation visibility
• establish clearer governance and decision cadence
• and progressively strengthen strategy implementation capability.

The key point is this:

Organisations do not need to begin by admitting: “our governance is broken.” They only need to recognise: “we cannot do everything, and our current way of prioritising and coordinating work is creating friction.”

That is usually enough to begin a very productive conversation.

So perhaps the real question is not: “Do we need better prioritisation?” Perhaps it is: “What is our current approach to prioritisation revealing about the health of our organisation?”

Conclusions

Our Conclusions were:

• Prioritisation is not merely a (project) portfolio management activity that covers only change activity, it also covers business as usual and value creation (run and change). It is one of the few organisational processes that forces strategy, governance, operational reality, delivery capability and resource constraints into direct interaction.
• Most organisations do not primarily
  • suffer from lack of prioritisation methods. They suffer from weak translation between strategy, investment decisions, operational priorities and delivery execution.
  • lack strategy or delivery capability. They lack explicit ownership of strategy implementation – the continuous translation, coordination and steering required between strategy creation and execution.
• Prioritisation problems are often symptoms of deeper organisational issues:
  • unclear / conflicting objectives
  • weak strategic translation
  • fragmented governance
  • inconsistent accountability
  • hidden trade-offs
  • poor visibility of constraints and dependencies
  • weak information flows
  • and disconnected / inconsistent decision-making.
• Organisations operate through multiple simultaneous prioritisation layers:
  • strategic optionality
  • investment prioritisation
  • delivery sequencing
  • and operational execution.
  • Confusing these layers creates instability and perceived “changing priorities.”
• Prioritisation is where organisational incoherence becomes operationally visible. Many issues that remain hidden at board or strategy level surface when resources, sequencing and delivery trade-offs must actually be managed.
• Governance maturity is less about eliminating politics and more about making:
  • trade-offs
  • assumptions
  • optionality
  • constraints
  • and consequences
    more explicit and transparent.
• PMOs are often uniquely positioned to see enterprise-wide implementation friction because they observe:
  • dependencies
  • resource contention
  • sequencing conflicts
  • delivery overload
  • and governance breakdowns across organisational boundaries.
• Strategy cannot be treated as a static periodic planning exercise. Strategy implementation requires continuous steering, adaptation, learning and reprioritisation.
• Adaptive strategy only works if organisations possess sufficient implementation discipline, governance integration and operational visibility underneath it.
• Most organisations possess strategy development capability and delivery management capability, but lack explicit ownership of strategy implementation coherence.
• Strategy implementation is not merely programme execution. It is an ongoing organisational capability involving:
  • prioritisation
  • translation
  • governance
  • trade-off management
  • dependency coordination
  • operational alignment
  • and continuous steering.
• Organisations frequently do not lack prioritisation frameworks – they lack trust in the legitimacy, transparency and fairness of prioritisation decisions.
  • Effective prioritisation requires both:
  • formal authority (decision rights)
  • and cultural authority (trust in the process and outcomes).
• Improving strategy delivery is therefore not primarily about better project execution. It is about improving organisational capability to continuously translate strategic intent into coordinated decisions and behaviour and continuously make coherent trade-offs across strategy, operations, transformation and delivery.
• Prioritisation provides a practical and politically acceptable starting point for improving wider strategy implementation and integrated governance capability.

Session Recording – the Evidence

Call to Action

If these themes resonate with you, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss:

• how your organisation currently prioritises
• where implementation friction appears
• and whether prioritisation could become the practical starting point for improving strategy delivery and integrated governance capability.

If you would like a conversation with a peer group – please consider BIG Membership.

If you would like professional support, please consult:

• Partners
• Professional Members
• Solution Providers

Next Session – Accountability